As much as I enjoyed that little burst of powder on Tuesday, we are paying the piper now. With just about no freeze overnight, the skiing was challenging today, due to an extreme case of the stickies. It was not bad, it just meant that you had to be at the right place at just the right time to enjoy it fully.
With my visiting family busily making bacon while I was leaving for the hill, I had a good two hour head start on making some hot laps early on. I headed to Summit with Bobble and hoped for the best. That first run was nirvana, top to bottom: Alpine Bowl to Charity to Kangaroo Ridge. It was creamy corduroy the whole way. While that was awesome, it’s not typically that way, top to bottom. That was the canary in the coal mine that predicted the rest of the day.
With Alpine Bowl so soft at 9:10am, I decided to test out the ungroomed since yesterday “Solar Prominence” (between Sunspot and Solar Flare, and I looked up the correct astronomical term). It was absolutely perfect for my second run. The next run it was sticky at the lower pitch exit. The next run, it was a hot mess. That’s pretty much the way everything went today. Catch it at just the right time, and you might just get a great run or two.
The best of those streaks was at Scott this morning. I probably could have stretched that to 5 or 6 runs, but I got the call to join “Hurricane Dahlen” back on Summit. Sure it was sticky but family and all sometimes has to take precedence over good skiing, as my two youngest grand-nieces probably weren’t ready for Scott or Lakeview. Therefore I never made it to the backside today.
For those keeping score, I skied over at Palisades for the fifth time this season. We checked out both Shirley and Granite Chief and found conditions to be basically comparable. The steeper sections were skiable, but it’s the flat runouts that get you to think about heading back to the Alpine Meadows Sun Deck for a cold beer and another band.
Overall, between the B2B and the Funitel, I spent about an hour riding shiny boxes. But family, ya know, plus my nephew was prepared with a backpack loaded with adult beverages. Life is good.
The chance of a freeze tonight is not great. I see the forecast shows a degree cooler than last night, but the cloudy skies worry me. That will likely result in less radiational cooling. The point forecast actually calls for a slight chance of rain showers. Conditions today were incrementally better than yesterday and hopefully that incremental change will continue as we head through the weekend and into next week as there is no solid freeze in sight.
The 37th Annual Snow Golf Tournament will be held at Alpine Meadows tomorrow. Register for the event on the Sun Deck in the morning from 9-11am. The 9 hole course is played with tennis balls from the top of Summit. There is a prize for best costumes, generally done as a foursome. There’s also raffle prizes for participants, as long as you turn in your scorecard, and are present for the drawing. There’s definitely rampant cheating, so scores do not really matter. It’s fun and may provide you with a fun alternative if it is sticky tomorrow. If not, you may prefer to avoid the Alpine Bowl zone tomorrow.
An updated operations blog was posted today. There have been no changes as to what was previously announced as far as days and dates of operations. There were specifics given for which lifts might operate. I think we’re pretty clear that Kangaroo, Yellow and ABC are done for the year. April 30th was given as a potential end date for Lakeview and the Tiegel terrain park. The B2B is also done on April 30th. All other lifts will continue as conditions and staffing allows.
In case you missed it in a previous post, Treats is heading into it’s last week of operations, being done on April 30th.
There’s no changes in the weather to be aware of yet. We will likely be taking a couple of days a week off from posting from here on out as well as we head into the 4th quarter and overtime parts of the season.
That’s interesting news about B2B closing 4/30. I would have thought they would want to show off the new lift for as long as possible and the spring alternating schedule would seem to be the idea time to have it running……
By the terms of a lawsuit filed after the B2B was approved, the gondola may not operate after April 30. The protection of some endangered species was the reason. It good in that it does provide a hard stop date that prevents summer operations.
Ha! Perfect. The one part of the year when I might (MIGHT) have wanted to use it, not available…….
Skied squaw today, started on red dog face, solid no softening yet, then over to kt for a hard icy run to headwall, skied sun bowl was perfect then the face, not good at all, up Siberia for 2 runs sticky on the flats, took big blue up to Shirley, 3 runs on granite chief good on the steeps, sticky sticky on the flats, back to Siberia hiked up to palisades as rest was to sticky, skied extra chute, probably last time in my life as I will not be renewing my ikon pass, had it with the traffic, a sticky run down mountain, was a lot tougher than extra chute, then 4 more runs on red dog, the face was steep enough to be ok, there is my report, back to mt. Rose tomorrow hopefully the chutes will be open as I need steep runs on these warm days
Hurricane Dahlen?
My nephew and his lady friend, three preteen girls and one teenage girl. Always welcome guests in our house!